ORGANIC (or intrinsic) architecture
is the free architecture of ideal democracy. To defend and explain whatever I have
myself built and written on the subject I here append a nine-word lexicon needed,
worldwide, at this moment of our time.

May 20, 1953 The Future of
Architecture, Frank Lloyd Wright

The words.

NATURE. Why? As in popular
use this word is first among abuses to be corrected.

ORGANIC. Ignorant use or
limitation of the word organic.

FORM FOLLOWS FUNCTION. Too
many foolish stylistic constructions are placed upon the slogan.

ROMANCE. A universal change
is taking place in the use of this word, a change to which organic architecture has itself
given rise. No longer sentimental.

TRADITION. Confusion of all
eclectics, especially critics, concerning the word.

ORNAMENT. The grace or
perdition of architecture; for the past 500 years appliqué.

SPIRIT. Any version or
subversion of the word by so-called international style or by any fashion promoted by
experts.

THIRD DIMENSION. Where and
why the term was original. What it now means in architecture.

SPACE. A new element contributed
by organic architecture as style.

When the nine words I have listed
here are added together (they often are) a degradation of original form and intent which
no vitality can bear, is widespread. Due to much prevalent imposition the gutter
seems the only visible destination of an original idea of architecture that is basic to
democratic culture: an ideal that might become the greatest constructive creative
philosophy of our day if only understood and well practiced. That philosophy
is surely the center line of integral or democratic culture in these United States if and
when we awaken to the true meaning and intent not only of organic architecture but also of
the American democracy we are founded as a nation to maintain. So I shall try
to explain these nine terms. All are on the center education today
tend to turn young lives more and more toward sterility. Elimination of
creation in favor of any cliché that will best serve mechanization. Mediocrity
serves it best because mechanization best serves the mediocre. Present
tendencies toward the mediocre international style not only degrade organic American
architecture but will eventually destroy the creative architect in America, as elsewhere.

DEFINITIONS

1. NATURE means not just the out-of
doors, clouds, trees, storms, the terrain and animal life, but refers to their
nature as to the nature of materials or the nature of a plan, a sentiment, or
a tool. A man or anything concerning him, from within. Interior nature with
capital N. Inherent PRINCIPLE.

2. The word ORGANIC denotes in
architecture not merely what may hang in a butcher shop, get about on two feet or be
cultivated in a field. The word organic refers to entity, perhaps integral or
intrinsic would therefore be a better word to use. As originally used in
architecture, organic means part-to-whole-as-whole-is-to-part. So entity as integral
is what is really meant by the word organic. INTRINSIC.

3. FORM FOLLOWS FUNCTION. This is a
much abused slogan. Naturally form does so. But on a lower level and the
term is useful only as indicating the platform upon which architectural form rests.
As the skeleton is no finality of human form any more than grammar is the form
of poetry, just so function is to architectural form. Rattling the bones is
not architecture. Less is only more where more is no good.

Form is
predicated by function but, so far as poetic imagination can go with it without
destruction, transcends it. Form follows function has become
spiritually insignificant: a stock phrase. Only when we say or write form
and function are one is the slogan significant. It is now the
password for sterility. Internationally.

4. ROMANCE, like the word BEAUTY, refers
to a quality. Reactionary use of this honorable but sentimentalized term by critics
and current writers is confusing. Organic architecture sees actuality as the
intrinsic romance of human creation or sees essential romance as actual in creation.
So romance is the new reality. Creativity divines this. No teamwork can
conceive it. A committee can only receive it as a gift from
the inspired individual. In the realm of organic architecture human
imagination must render the harsh language of structure into becoming humane expressions
of form instead of devising inanimate facades or rattling the bones of construction.
Poetry of form is as necessary to great architecture as foliage is to the tree, blossoms
to the plant or flesh to the body. Because sentimentality ran away with this human
need and negation is now abusing it is no good reason for taking the abuse of the thing
for the thing.

Until the mechanization of
buildings is in the service of creative architecture and not creative architecture in the
service of mechanization we will have no great architecture.

5. TRADITION may have
many traditions just is TRUTH may have many truths. When we of organic architecture
speak of truth we speak of generic principle. The genus bird  may
fly away as flocks of infinitely differing birds of almost unimaginable variety: all of
them merely derivative. So in speaking of tradition we use the word as also a
generic term. Flocks of traditions may proceed to fly from generic tradition
into unimaginable many. Perhaps none have creative capacity because all are only
derivative. Imitations of imitation destroy an original tradition.
TRUTH is a divinity in architecture.

6.
ORNAMENT. Integral element of architecture, ornament is to architecture what
efflorescence of a tree or plant is to its structure. Of the thing, not on it.
Emotional in its nature, ornament is- if well conceived-not only the poetry but is the
character of structure revealed and enhanced. If not well conceived, architecture is
destroyed by ornament.

7.
SPIRIT. What is spirit? In the language of organic architecture the
spiritual is never something descending upon the thing from above as a kind of
illumination but exists within the thing itself as its very life. Spirit grows
upward from within and outward. Spirit does not come down from above to be suspended
there by skyhooks or set up on posts.

There are two uses of nearly
every word or term in usual language but in organic sense any term is used in reference to
the inner not the outer substance. A word, such as nature for instance,
may be used to denote a material or a physical means to an end. Or the same word may
be used with spiritual significance but in this explanation of the use of terms in organic
architecture the spiritual sense of the word is uppermost in use in every case.

8.
The THIRD DIMENSION. Contrary to popular belief, the third dimension is not
thickness but is depth. The term third dimension is used in organic
architecture to indicate the sense of depth which issues as of the thing not on
it. The third dimension, depth, exists as intrinsic to the building.

9.
SPACE. The continual becoming: invisible fountain from which all rhythms
flow to which they must pass. Beyond time or infinity. The
new reality which organic architecture serves to employ in building. The
breath of a work of art.

If what I have myself written upon
the subject of architecture and any one on the 560 building I have built are studied with
this nine-word lexicon in mind, I am sure we will have far less of the confusion and
nonsensical criticism upon which inference, imitation, doubt and prejudice have
flourished. Isms, ists and ites defeat the great hope we are still trying to keep
alive in our hearts in face of prevalent expedients now sterilizing the work of young
American architects and rendering our schools harmful to the great art of architecture
although perhaps profitable to science commercialized. If organic (intrinsic)
architecture is not to live, we of these United States of American will never live as true
culture. Architecture must first become basic to us as creative art, therefore
beneficent the world over. Present tendencies in education are so far
gone into reverse by way of museum factotums, various committees and university regents
spending millions left behind by hard working millionaires that owing to fashions of
internationalism promoted by the internationalite we will have seen the last of the
architecture of great architects not only in our democracy but all over the world besides
where there is danger of the machine becoming a pattern of life instead of life using the
machine as a tool.

Because our Declaration of
Independence saw democracy as the gospel of individuality and saw it as above polemics or
politics, probably a definition of the word democracy should be added to this lexicon of
nine words. Therefore a tenth:

Democracy
is our national ideal . Not yet well understood by ourselves so not yet
realized. But we are a new republic professing this ideal of freedom for
growth of the individual. Why not cherish it? Freedom is not to be
conceived as numbered freedoms. It true, freedom is never to be conceived in
parts. Freedom is of the man and is not accorded to him or
ascribed to him except as he may require protection.

For that purpose government-as
protection-exists, not as a policy maker. Democracy is thus the highest form of
aristocracy ever seen. Aristocracy intrinsic.

A gentleman? No longer chosen
and privileged by autocratic power he must rise from the masses by inherent
virtue. His qualities as a man will give him title and keep it for
him. Individual conscience will rule his social acts. By love of
quality as against quantity he will choose his way through life. He will learn to
know the difference between the curious and the beautiful. Truth will be a divinity
to him. As his gentlehood cannot be conferred, so it may not be
inherited. This gentleman of democracy will be found in any honest occupation
at any level of fortune, loving beauty, doing his best and being kind.

Anyone may see by our own absurd
acts and equivocal policies how confused we are by our own ideal when we proceed to work
it out. But the principles of organic architecture are the center line of our
democracy in America when we do understand what both really mean.

Only by the growth and exercise of
individual conscience does the man earn or deserve his rights.
Democracy is the opposite of totalitarianism, communism, fascism or mobocracy.
But democracy is constantly in danger from mobocracy-rising tide of as yet unqualified
herd-instinct. Mechanized mediocrity. The conditioned mind instead of the
enlightened mind.

E-MAIL: james@schildrotharchitect.com There
is so much SPAM these days so if you are sending me an e-mail for the first time put
something in the subject line like "ORGANIC" so that I don't delete it with all
the SPAM. I do want to hear from you. Thanks, James
Schildroth.